The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

‘A thousand-miles-an-hour hoot.’ Esquire
‘Hilarious…and immensely moving.’ The New Yorker
‘A blast of satirical heat from the talented heart of black American life.’ New York Times

White Boy Shuffle is Booker Prize-winner Paul Beatty’s electrifying debut novel about teenage-surf-bum Gunnar Kaufman who is forced to wise up when his mother moves from suburban Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighbourhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a ‘divided, downtrodden people’.  

A bombastic coming-of-age novel that has the uncanny ability to make readers want to laugh and cry at the same time,Beatty mingles horrific reality with wild fancy in this outlandish, laugh-out-loud funny and poignant vision of contemporary America.

‘A thousand-miles-an-hour hoot’ 

‘A dazzling satire of the African-American urban experience’ 

'He won the Booker for 2015's The Sellout but my heart belongs to Beatty's sharp-edged debut… It feels even more pertinent today'

PAUL BEATTY is the author of the novels Slumberland, Tuff, The White Boy Shuffle and The Sellout, which won the Booker Prize in 2016. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce, and is the editor of Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. He lives in New York City.